Reaching heights with Unifyed – Completing four years

Today I have completed four years @Unifyed. There are ups and downs, but whatever happens, you have to trust and believe in yourself while taking the right decisions. Working as Vice President, Operations wherein directly or indirectly I’m managing all our teams. Although there are enough learnings throughout these years, however, because its 4th?anniversary, sharing some of the key learnings [4].??

Get Into The Game:?

To deliver excellence to your clients (end-users) you first need to know what you have to offer to them i.e. your Product. We all have heard about KYC (know your customers) but I would highlight “KYP” – Know Your Product. Learn, manage, and eat your product in and out. No one else other than you understand better about your product. Knowing your Product to the core of it helps you to strategize a plan for your clients to deliver excellence in all areas.??

When we introduced Unifyed Engage product in 2019, I learned the product and then created our own tenant (considering it as a project) and launched it for our clients (end-users) having all the updates about company/newsletter/events/product releases/product roadmap/updates/technical documentation/help section, etc. As well as for our team including all the processes for different groups and internal news. Eat your own food – this was only possible because I knew our product and saw what all it can bring.??

Aim For Awesome:?

What is the best way for self-motivation – celebrating every small win! Yaaay! How about adding one more layer to it – whatever you do, do it in such a way that everyone ends up saying ‘it's awesome’. How? Just aim for awesome and not for being average. There are no hidden facts to be awesome, it is just that you need to keep a check on your deliverable and act as a CEO (doesn’t matter if you are or not). Everyone is a CEO. Taking accountability and ownership moves you to the next level which you may not even know.??

Recently, there was an escalation by one of our clients on a project, however, I wasn't involved. I did not know any deliverable of it, however, I receive a call during non-working hours to have everyone work together so that we can share the updates with our clients to calm them down and let them know that we are on it! I did it, without giving it a thought that this isn’t my project. Even bringing all of them together on a call during non-working hours and sending the update to the client. We were able to meet our escalation protocol SLA because I decided to aim for awesome!?

Be process dependent and not people dependent??

While people are the best assets for any organization, there must be a defined way to manage their regular activities, tasks, job alignment, etc. This is where processes come into play. Every organization should try to become process dependent wherein they have pre-defined processes, documented properly, aligned with company goals, explaining what is expected from whom. Once you become process-dependent, it won’t take much time for the new bees (even if the new ones are experienced) to pick up fast and be a part of the team. Or even if some existing member takes leaves for a longer time, it will affect the business operations if you are people dependent. On the other side, if you are process dependent, you can bring together your team members, walk through them the process, and get them to roll with it. Hence, rather than waiting for the member to join back and be stuck at the same place, you can temporarily involve the other members to complete the task, juice is worth the squeeze.??????????

Following the same, I have documented all the processes and shared them with all the mid-level management so that they can share them with their team and can plan people management. Along with Automating every stuff which carries forward as-is whenever you left or hand it over to others. The only key component in defining the process would be adding the SLAs too and the owners of the tasks. Believe me, the juice is worth the squeeze.??

If expense is x then revenue should be 3x?

Working in Operations, the first thumb rule is ‘if you wish to forecast to spend x to achieve your goals, you should also have the pipeline for 5x and revenue forecast for 3x’. The end game is revenue, that’s it!??

For the financial planning or budgeting process, our revenue should always be higher than our expenses, which results in ‘a budget surplus’, we should never ever consider having ‘a budget deficit’ where expenses would be higher than revenue. Although we keep a check on FY 22 as an overall budget, mapping it and reviewing it month-on-month with revenue and collection and expense helps in maintaining the balanced budget and planning our expenses.??

Provided you are hitting your numbers and have all the processes in place, to make your team run on an auto-pilot, you are definitely a winner!?I am thankful to everyone on Unifyed team who helped me to grow and learn.

Do share your key learnings in the comments and we can connect to discuss and come up with more such posts.??